The historical development of the natural law theory involves a lot of concepts from different people whom are termed as naturalists. People such as Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, John Finnis, Cicero etc. They all have different concepts even though some of the naturalists acknowledged and some disagreed with the Ancient philosophers, somehow it is contradicting. With these concepts from
own theories and came up with new political thoughts that were revolutionary in their time. Prodigious political philosophers like Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke and Montesquieu thought of unique ways to improve the government and discussed it with their peers. The political ideas and philosophies debated about during the Enlightenment are fulfilled through the United States Constitution and The Declaration of Independence. Rousseau is the first of the political philosophers that one would discuss
Man must be dictated, “for rebellion is but war renewed” (Thomas Hobbes, 195). Man acts only on his instincts, desires, passions. Each acts only according to his self-interest, for nature has “render[ed] men apt to invade and destroy one another” (78). Consequently, the government must be one of sovereign power, one of intimidation and regulation: one of Leviathan. Though man is often rash, one cannot “accuse man’s nature...[for] the desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin” (78)
Political thinkers have often regarded that the human nature is chaotic in nature and that individuals cannot exist without the politic. Almost all political philosophers acknowledge that the only way to escape the state of nature is through a government which has some method to enforce compliance with laws and some degree of centralization. There can be two reasons for obeying a law: a prudential and a moral reason. The prudential reasons to obey the law doesn’t prescribe a moral duty upon the
Thomas Hobbes famously said that in the "state of nature", human life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". http://www.worldhistory.biz/sundries/31769-thomas-hobbes-on-the-state-of-nature-quot-solitary-poor-nasty-brutish-and-short.html#sthash.HDepVYCr.dpuf In the absence of political law and order, everyone would have the freedom to do as they pleased and thus the freedom to plunder, rape, and murder; there would be an endless war of all against all. To avoid this, free men contract
expressions of American political beliefs to this date.
The 18th Century saw the application of ideas from the Scientific Revolution being applied to social and political science in what came to be known as the Enlightenment. It was during this time that thinkers began to earnestly question the social structures that had been in place for centuries. One of the first Enlightenment thinkers was François-Marie Arouet, now known as Voltaire. Perhaps his harshest look at contemporary society was his satirical novel Candide, a love story set in 18th century